I'll Be Close Behind
by Smokeybubble
Summary: A short one-shot. Set sometime during Season 7. Warning: Deathfic. When Dean finds them, it's already too late. Inspired by "I Will Follow You Into the Dark", by Death Cab for Cutie.


Um, well, I have no idea what I'm doing. This plot bunny came to me, sank its teeth into my arm and wouldn't let go until I wrote this. I pounded it out in a couple hours with minimal editing, so many apologies if there are typos and/or other issues. Title and inspiration come from "I Will Follow You Into the Dark", by Death Cab for Cutie. Reviews are always welcome!

And for people who are following The Stars Stare Down Uncaring, **NO I HAVE NOT ABANDONED IT.** Sheesh. I keep telling you guys that, but nobody ever believes me. It's just going slow right now, but rest assured, **IT WILL BE UPDATED**. I don't know how many more ways I can say it.

Disclaimer: All things Supernatural belong to Eric Kripke and the CW and all those other people who aren't me. I'm just messing around in their sandbox.

Warnings: Dark topics including major character death, suicide, mentions of torture, some language, and a semi-happy ending.

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><p>Dean finds them ten hours later.<p>

He knows they're not expecting him, knows they thought he was long gone, off along route 29 on a two day trip. Running down a lead on a fucking bukavac, of all things. But he'd gotten a call from Bobby only three hours down the road. Turns out the murders had just been some homeless whackjob living in the marsh around the lake. A homeless whackjob with a penchant for strangling unfortunate campers, but a homeless whackjob nonetheless. Dean had pulled over, flipping open his phone to call Sam and break the news that there was no Russian water-monster to take down. Geek kid would probably have been disappointed- he always enjoyed hunts with creatures they'd never seen before. Maybe there was a thrill in researching the most obscure shit possible, Dean had thought with a snort. That seemed like something Sam would find exciting.

Only, Sam never picked up.

The tires crunch on old gravel, headlights swinging to illuminate the clearing. The two men barely have a chance to scramble out of their chairs, reaching for weapons before they're crumpling to the ground like paper dolls, a bullet hole in each of their foreheads. Dean lets his hand drop to his side, the odor of gunpowder ashen in his mouth. He ignores the corpses (beer from the bottles beside them pooling into the earth, like they were fucking celebrating), striding past them, fear stark in his heart.

_Sammy!_ His call echoes through the darkening trees, bouncing off old machinery and fading flat into the twilight.

They took him to an old logging camp. Abandoned, miles of forest between here and the next town. Plenty of space for screams to sink into silence. Dean doesn't know why they took him. Could be any number of reasons (demon blood, lucifer, the apocalypse. Maybe for no other reason than he's a Winchester and life just likes to kick them when they're down), but it doesn't matter now. It's too quiet, and the sick feeling in Dean's chest isn't going away.

He searches between the stacks of dried trunks, their bark stripped and branches filed away. Dean doesn't know why the logging company up and left, doesn't really care. Urgency sings a death march in his blood. The snapping of twigs is too loud, the only noise besides the terrible, ragged breaths he's trying to swallow. _Sammy! _he shouts again.

He finds him, finally. But the sight rises up in his mind and chokes him, a paralysis that sinks icy claws into his muscles. Freezes his thoughts like icicles hanging from the eaves. Stasis, as the sun slips lower and the birds set up a shrill chorus in the background. _Sam_, he says again, a broken sob, stumbling over the uneven ground and falling to his knees beside his brother.

Sam is cold. He's sprawled across the weed-strewn ground, an unwanted toy thrown aside like so much trash. His remaining eye (the other gone, torn away with the left side of his face) stares unblinking at the sky, hollow hazel glassy as a pre-dawn lake. Dean reaches out a hand, surprised that the fingers do not tremble (they should be shaking, because the ground is quaking and cracking under his feet), and touches two fingers to Sam's pale throat. No pulse beats.

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><p>Really, it was a kind of irony that they brought him to a lumber yard. Dean builds the pyre in the growing dusk, splinters tearing at his palms and a feeling like sandpaper scraping rough inside his skull. No deals this time. They've taken that path too many times before. First Dean at the crossroads, then Sam down that twisted road that Ruby carved for him. They've damned themselves for the other time and again, but it's ending here. Dean sees it now.<p>

When he's finished, he goes back to Sam's body, white skin pearly in the last tendrils of sunlight. He'd arranged Sam on his back, hands folded over his chest. He might have looked peaceful, but his shoulder sticks up oddly where the bone has broken through, and his face is misshapen, one high cheekbone caved in under the weight of too many blows. His shirt and the skin underneath had been shredded, forcing Dean to dig through the trunk for an extra set of (funeral) clothes to hide the gory ribbons of flesh, gravel embedded in the wounds. Dean feels a burst of incandescent fury at the sight. He wonders if Sam was even dead by the time they tied him to the back bumper of their truck and dragged him for God knows how many miles.

The first star shivers into view on the horizon as Dean gently, so gently picks up what used to be his brother and carries him over to the pyre. By the time the flames are licking around the base, the star has been joined by a squadron of its fellows. They watch Dean as he lets the fire burn brighter and brighter, shooting red and gold sparks high into the air. The moon, hardly a crescent over the distant hills, makes the tears on his face glow with silver and frost. The trees stir in sympathy as Dean throws back his head and howls.

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><p>The two men are easy to dispose of. He drags their unnamed corpses to the shallow pit he dug and dumps an entire can of accelerant in after them. He wishes, for a moment, that he hadn't made their deaths so quick. He's the student of Alastair after all. He could have made it last for days, until their voices were too tired even to whimper. But the moment passes, and the bleak void rushes back into the spaces of his soul, like a frigid wind blowing through him and carrying the pieces away.<p>

He torches the bodies and waits until the last ember has burned itself out before kicking dirt over the grave.

There's only one thing left to do. He sits beside the ashes of Sam's pyre as he pulls out his phone and dials Bobby. Doesn't let him get a word out before he's explaining everything in a clinical, detached tone. Dean stays on the line long enough to tell him their location and to thank him, hanging up on the _Dean, hold on-_ that is all Bobby has time to say. He hopes Bobby takes good care of the Impala. He's the only person Dean would entrust her to.

The moon has risen over the trees. Gaining confidence as it touches everything in a faint, ghostly pallor. Dean looks at it, looks at the trees rustling in the wind and the stark silhouettes of rusted machinery left in the logging yard. His Taurus is heavy in his hand. He knows the weight so well, has felt it in his palm for every battle they've gone through. It's almost comforting to feel it now, as he puts the gun in his mouth and points it up.

Suicide is a sin, he knows. Not that Heaven would have taken him anyway. He doesn't think Sam would end up there either, not with the demon blood and after all the shit the two of them pulled on Earth. Somehow though, he doubts they're heading downstairs. The Winchester brothers have helped too many people, saved too many lives to merit a ticket in that direction. Maybe Cas (if there's any of Cas still left under the crazy god that he's become) will know what has happened to them. Maybe he'll be able to carve them out a corner of something good. Dean doesn't think so (when has their luck ever worked like that?), but it's a nice thought to go out on.

The sharp crack of the gunshot shatters the night like a mirror splintering into a thousand shards.

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><p>It's dark here. Black. It was cold where he was, just seconds ago, but now there is no cold, no warmth. No grass beneath his feet. No light to illuminate his surroundings, if they exist at all. For a split instant, an eternity, he is alone in the shadows, unmoored, a single pinprick adrift in an ocean of shadowy nothing.<p>

Then a hand brushes against his own. A shoulder knocks his, the familiar smell of old paper and chocolate, cheap linen and _home_ filling the air where a heartbeat ago there was no air to fill. Dean turns, and Sam is stepping up next to him, a smile hovering around the corners of his lips.

_You idiot,_ he says to Dean, fond and exasperated and a hint of reproach. He is the only thing tangible in their formless world. _You shouldn't have done that._

Dean grins back, their fingers twining together, united just as they've always been. _Maybe not,_ he admits. _But I'd do it again._

Sam squeezes his hand, once. They may not know what will happen now, but it doesn't matter. Hands still clasped together, Sam walks forward. Dean follows his brother into the dark.


End file.
